


Not Too Late

by anastiel



Series: Supernatural Codas [17]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel/Dean Winchester in Purgatory, Coda, Episode: s15e09 The Trap, First Kiss, M/M, Season/Series 15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22324879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anastiel/pseuds/anastiel
Summary: Something in Dean’s brain clicks, all the puzzle pieces of devotion, pain, and years of history between them finally comes together. It builds in Dean’s chest manifesting in a sort of unwavering ache he’s never felt before.This is it, love feels like this.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Supernatural Codas [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/160976
Comments: 26
Kudos: 427





	Not Too Late

“Mommy, what does love feel like?”

Mary pauses from her place at the kitchen counter where she’s cutting off the crusts of a PB&J. Dean watches her smile, wide and radiant like the sun shining in through the kitchen window behind her. 

“It’s hard to explain. You know how you feel when you eat ice cream?”

Dean nods. He does _love_ ice cream, especially on pie, it’s one of his favorite things. He’d have it for every meal if Mommy would let him. 

“Or when you see Dad come home from work? Or you get to hold Sammy? It’s like that, but different.”

He loves Daddy and Sammy, and always feels happy around them. Does love mean happy?

“Different? How?” Dean asks, confused.

Mary chuckles, light and it sounds like a dozen bells ringing. She crosses the kitchen and places the sandwich in front of Dean. She looks down at him with a softer smile and ruffles his hair with her palm. 

“You’ll find out one day, baby. No one will need to tell you, you’ll just know.”

* * *

When Dean wakes it’s to the stench of burning -- foul and sour like someone lit a rotten apple on fire. Momentarily disoriented, head aching, he pushes up onto his elbow, gun still held tight in his hand and glances around. 

There was an angel trap, Eve was after Cas. Leviathans. Fighting. Someone knocked Dean out.

_Cas._

“No.” Hastily, he scrambles to his feet, frantically spinning around, searching the edges of the nearby forest for any sign of a tan trenchcoat and a shock of dark hair. 

“Cas? Cas?!” Dean yells. 

Nothing, just trees and burned Leviathan blossoms, their leaves charred and the fruit missing, leaving a dark hole where the pink tongue-like flower once was. At the edge of the sigil, there’s a gap in the warding, rubbed off in the dirt. They took Cas somewhere. Panic flutters in his chest, a quick wingbeat.

He can’t lose Cas, not here, not again.

Dean swallows down the fear bubbling up in the back of his throat, angles his gun towards the trees, and starts walking. 

“Cas?!” Dean yells, every few paces, continuing into the thickening forest.

Dean doesn’t know how long he was been out, could have been minutes, could have been hours. There are no tracks leading from the sigil out into the woods, so he wanders, weaving in and out through the trees. The longer he goes without finding Cas, the quicker his heart rate increases. He feels like he can’t breathe properly like there’s something lodged in his windpipe.

It can’t end like this. 

After seemingly endless walking, Dean grabs his phone out of his pocket, checking the timer: just over 29 minutes left before the portal closes. 

_Fuck._

“No. Nononono.” He scans through the trees, tears pricking at his eyes. 

He steps up to the nearest tree, fingertips ghosting over the rough bark, looking for something to hold onto, to keep him from drowning.

What if it’s too late, what if Cas is -- Dean’s heart drops into his stomach. As a last-ditch effort, clinging to the desperation clawing inside him, he prays. 

* * *

_Cas, I hope you can hear me...that wherever you are, it's not too late..._

_And I forgive you, of course, I forgive you._

* * *

Like the good soldier he was trained to be, Dean wipes his tears, and carries on. 

Somehow, through a stroke of luck, he finds the portal, a glimmering beacon, stark against the dark of the forest. He checks the time again: 02:57.

There’s not enough time. He darts his eyes around the forest, increasing his pace, looking for any possible sign of Cas. 

Nothing. There’s nothing. He’s gone. 

“Dean.”

Dean turns towards the noise, gun cocked and instantly goes lax when he sees Cas sitting up against a tree. 

“Cas.”

They stumble towards each other and Dean grips Cas tight, pulls Cas to him and holds him. He’s real and alive and Dean releases a stuttered breath from deep in his lungs and clings.

Cas explains what happened and Dean listens, takes it in, and just _looks_ at him. 

“I waited until I saw this,” Cas says pulling out the Leviathan blossom from safekeeping inside his coat. “It got a little smushed.”

He smiles, a quirk of the mouth, a touch of softness just for Dean that is foreign in this place.

Something in Dean’s brain clicks, all the puzzle pieces of devotion, pain, and years of history between them finally comes together. It builds in Dean’s chest manifesting in a sort of unwavering ache he’s never felt before. 

_This is it, love feels like this._

He’s reeling with the realization that he barely hears Cas suggest that they continue moving, that the Leviathan are still on their trail. He’s bursting with the need to tell him, to make sure Cas heard his pray earlier too.

“Cas, I gotta say something.”

Cas shakes his head. “You don’t have to say it, I heard your prayer.”

Their eyes meet and it hits Dean like a lightning strike, and all the breath rushes out of his lungs. He wants to say more, but he can’t find the words. Instead, when Cas breaks eye contact, turning towards the portal, Dean follows. 

Of course, he follows. 

* * *

Behind them, the portal closes with a fizzle and a snap, dissipating out of thin air. Dean turns to look at the empty air and feels every ounce of tension leave his body. 

They’re safe, Cas is safe. 

With a shaking hand, he reaches out and grapples for Cas’ coat. The fabric slips between his fingers, but it gets Cas to turn to him, that stupid blossom still clenched tight in Cas’ hand.

“Dean?”

On instinct, heart acting for him, Dean steps close and cups Cas’ cheek in his hand. Cas’ fingers grip his sleeve, pulls him closer. He feels the heat of Cas’ shaky breath, ghost over his palm. 

“We made it,” Dean whispers.

Cas’ fingers brush over Dean’s cheek, and he brings their foreheads together. “We did”

They share breath, and Dean takes the heat of Cas’ weighted gaze, feels it to the depths of his soul, and it’s _not enough,_ but it’s a start. 

* * *

Later, after the dust settles, Chuck vanishing to who knows where bringing them back to square one, Eileen leaves, taking a piece of Sam’s heart with her. Dean tries to talk to him, tries to ease the ache. He doesn’t tell him he gets it, even though he does, more acutely than Sam might realize. But Sam has tunnel-vision, more intent on finding a solution to the Chuck-problem than dealing with whatever mess of emotion going on in that head of his. 

Dean lets him be for a while, figures when Sam wants to talk about it, they will. He finds himself back in the kitchen, nursing a whiskey.

“Dean,” Cas’ voice cuts through Dean’s thoughts and Dean turns to look at him. 

Cas still has a scrape on his forehead, blood crusting over now, but the color stands out on his skin. Dean itches to wipe it away, to clean him up and take care of Cas how Cas has done so for him so many times before. 

“Hey, how you doing?” Dean asks. 

“I’m... good,” Cas says after a pause. “Still recovering, but good.”

Dean pats the empty seat next to him, then starts pouring Cas a drink and fights back a smile when Cas sits down. He watches Cas take a measured drink, how his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows, how the fingers gripping his glass now have faint scars on them. 

Cas isn’t healing as easily as he used to and it worries Dean what that may mean in the coming months. If there’s one thing Dean learned recently it’s that life is too short to be angry, or to leave things unsaid.

Rubbing his fingers on the lip of his glass, Dean stares down into the amber liquid. “Are we... good?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean sees Cas’ mouth quirk up. “I told you, I heard your prayer Dean, we’re good.”

“Yeah, I know... I just...” Dean trails off. He sucks in a shaky breath and gathers all of his courage. “There’s something I gotta tell you.”

He chances a look at Cas, finds him with his head tilted to the side a look of open curiosity on his face. Dean loves him, _God,_ does he love him. 

“I don’t know how this is gonna end, if it ends bloody or if somehow we make it out on top. But what I do know is,” Dean licks his lips and makes sure Cas’ eyes are on his. “That I love you.” Dean sniffles and lets it out in a shaky laugh. “I should have told you so _fucking_ long ago, but I was waiting you know for shit to get better but it never did and it kept getting worse. There never seemed to be a time when things were okay and I’m tired of living for the future. And I know I don’t deserve you right now, after everything, but I love you and I want you in whatever way you’ll have me _if_ you’ll have me.”

“Dean,” Cas says, but its different than Cas has said his name before, gentle and careful like Dean is something precious. 

Dean blinks tears back from his eyes and says, “Yeah?”

Cas covers Dean’s hand with his own, warm fingers slotting between Dean’s and squeezing.“I love you too,” he says, resolute. Dean holds onto the words, ingrains them into his memory, places them somewhere deep inside his brain next to the sound of Mary’s laugh from when he was four. 

Dean rotates his hand so their palms join and squeezes back. “You do?”

Cas shakes his head at him like he’s ridiculous like this should have been _obvious._

“Dean, I love you more than anything in the universe.”

If anyone else had said that, Dean would’ve told them were crazy. But this is _Cas,_ and Dean knows without a shadow of a doubt he means it. There aren’t the proper words to convey the rising feeling of unbridled joy inside his chest, so he kisses Cas with everything he has and hopes that maybe it’s enough. 

Cas kisses back eagerly, just as desperate as Dean feels. He cups Dean’s cheek with his warm palm and pulls him inexplicably closer. They separate long enough for air, for Cas to smile against his lips and to brush the tips of their noses together. Cas kisses him this time, languid like they have all the time in the world. They don’t, but Dean’s going to pretend like they do and hope that he’ll get to have this, maybe for the rest of his life if he’s lucky.

Mary told him that he would know what love feels like when it happened, she never told him that it would feel like this, like coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> As always I can be found on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/anastiels). :)


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